Oh, pix that.
I needed this contraption to work now! When in doubt, push every button in sight and then whack it for good measure. The vacuum began to rise. It also started living up to its name. Sparkling dust swirled around me in a cyclonic pattern. My things blew around the room. One of my boots hit Griz in the side of head, knocking her stormball off course.
The stray ball took out the west wall.
“All right. Exit point established. Now how do you steer this thing?”
Once again, when in doubt…
I hit the yellow button and the cyclone tripled in size. The vacuum pitched forward and took off. Rexi squished against me, pushing the handle deep into my stomach.
I would have liked to see Griz’s angry face as we flew away, but everything not nailed down whirled around us and obscured the view.
Rexi’s screaming I could hear though. “Slow down!”
And exactly how was I supposed to do that? The blasted vacuum wasn’t working right, and the wind was too strong. Dust grit blinded me. I reached to push some more buttons.
Something snapped.
Before, we’d been going so fast that my cheeks felt like they’d been pushed back to my ears. Now my guts were twirling around like a jester’s cartwheels inside my body.
Don’t hurl. Don’t hurl. The Dust Devil clunked and sputtered. Within seconds, the cyclone stopped spinning—in midair. My stomach dropped. We were falling. Don’t die. Don’t die.
“Do something!” Rexi’s nails pierced my shoulders.
With the ground approaching, I said a quick prayer to the Storymakers and ripped off the front plastic panel. The emergency vacuum bag inflated, acting as a parachute. I inhaled a deep lungful of dust, relieved at least that part still worked. Thank Grimm.
When I looked down, I noticed the specks on the ground were getting larger at an alarming rate.
I’d acted too late. We were going to crash.
? ? ?
I came to lying in mud. I knew all my body parts were attached because all of them hurt.
Groan.
That wasn’t me.
“Get off me, you pixing cow!” Rexi’s hands pushed at me roughly.
I took my time. And I might have accidentally shoved my elbows in her ribs trying to get up.
Once standing, I surveyed the plastic and metal debris around me. The Dust Devil was grounded—permanently. One of the clanking sounds I’d heard had probably been the wire thingy falling off. With my handbag inside. All my stuff, gone.
The godmother of luck hadn’t totally abandoned us though; the food basket lay a few feet away. Grateful, I scrambled over to check the contents, to see what, if anything, had spilled during the flight.
When I opened the basket, I did not see bread, cheesecake, or even my emergency stash of Chocolate Wands with fudge and caramel centers. I saw tufts of fur and a pair of ice-water blue eyes. I was really starting to hate the color blue.
Flipping the basket over, I unceremoniously dumped Kato out on his horny little head. I shook the basket a few times, but only a couple of wrappers fell out.
Stunned, I plopped down in the muck. “You. Ate. Everything.”
He burped.
Rexi pulled herself out of the mud with a slurping sound. “I’m gonna kill you!”
Looking like a swamp monster, Rexi chased Kato, trying to beat him to a bloody pulp. After a minute, she gave up and collapsed back to the ground. “Just so you know, when I get hungry, I have no qualms about eating you.”
Kato answered by taking care of some business on a golden leaf fig tree.
Yet another item for his list of negatives. “Ugh, so disgusting.” I shuddered and looked away.
Wait. Emerald Kingdom got its name from trees with green gems. We didn’t have golden ones.
I jumped up, even though every muscle in my battered body protested. My head whipped around frantically while I tried to get my bearings. Not a trace of the springy green meadows of my home. In the predawn hours, the sky brightened with purple and orange. Logos, the first sun, was just about to rise over the mountain range to the east.
We didn’t have any mountains.
“Dear Grimm, we’re not in Emerald anymore.” I started to hyperventilate.
Rexi remained sprawled on her back. She barely opened an eye at my hysterics. “Duh.”
“Who needs parents when a land of adventure awaits? Once you find a fairy or two, you’ll never never miss ’em.”
—Neverland Orphanage Handbook
7
It’s a Big World After All
Sometimes the body works its own kind of magic. Take adrenaline, for example. In the heat of battle, a mortal wound feels like a scratch. A mother whose child is threatened has the strength of ten ogres. And a princess chased by a witch can abandon the only home she’s ever known.
Adrenaline had kept me going and put a big piece of tape around the things that were broken. Now the rush was gone, and so was the stuff that held me together.